


Attempt #534: The One With The Bees

by mardia



Category: The Good Place (TV)
Genre: Bondage, F/M, Resolved Sexual Tension, Sexual Frustration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-23
Updated: 2017-11-23
Packaged: 2019-02-05 19:47:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12801054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mardia/pseuds/mardia
Summary: “Eleanor!”  Chidi looks even more upset as he blurts out, “The universe doesn’t want us to have sex, okay?”Eleanor chokes. “I’m sorry,what?”





	Attempt #534: The One With The Bees

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nitpickyabouttrains](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nitpickyabouttrains/gifts).



> Canon-compliant with the first half of Season 2. Huge, huge thanks to my beta A for all of her help in editing this.

Honestly, given that they’ve been stuck in quarantine thanks to a stupid magical sinkhole for days, Eleanor is frankly stunned it took her and Chidi this long to get into a full-out fight. Although with Bart and Nina here as their guests, it figures that this would happen at the worst possible time.

“Face it, dude,” Eleanor snaps out at last, staring up into Chidi’s face, so angry and frustrated that she’s practically vibrating, “I’m the best thing that’s ever happened to you, because guess what, Chidi? _Ya basic_.”

As she emphatically gestures at his face, Chidi groans and stares up at the ceiling, gritting out, “Eleanor--” 

With the way that he’s tilting up his head, Eleanor is offered a really great look at the exposed line of Chidi’s throat and the hollow between his collarbones, revealed thanks to the way his shirt is unbuttoned at the collar...

It’s literally the most skin she’s seen Chidi expose, ever, and maybe it’s just the adrenaline from their fight, maybe it’s bottled-up energy over the past three tension-filled days, but Eleanor blurts out, “Yeah, I get it, you want to do that thing where we’re fighting and arguing--” Now Chidi’s staring at her, his eyes wide behind his glasses and his mouth pressed tight with frustration, except that just shows off the strong line of his jaw, dammit.

“--But then it’s like, ‘Whoa, this is hot,’ Eleanor continues, a little unsteadily in the face of how Chidi’s staring at her, “--and we start making out...” Eleanor trails off, because now Chidi’s mouth has fallen open a little and it looks, he looks--

“Whatever, fine, let’s just do it,” Eleanor says, giving in to the inevitable, and Chidi blurts out, “Eleanor, what--” except that Eleanor is going for it, she’s rising up and catching Chidi’s soft mouth with hers, her hands landing on Chidi’s chest as they stumble back against the wall.

Mercifully, it’s one of the few walls that doesn’t have any creepy clown art, and it turns out that Chidi is _built_ underneath those plain button-down shirts, so she presses herself closer. That’s what finally gets Chidi with the program as he starts kissing her back, his hands curving around her hips, fingers warm on the strip of skin that’s exposed as Eleanor’s sweatshirt starts to ride up. 

It’s a sign of how bonkers her time in the Good Place has been that making out with an ethics professor is the most fun thing Eleanor has done since she died. But it _is_ , and now that she’s here, Eleanor’s not planning on stopping. 

“Stupid--ugly--shirts,” she pants out against Chidi’s mouth, frantically tugging his shirt free, and then finally her hands are on his bare skin, sliding up his flat stomach. Chidi lets out a quiet groan--and then a higher-pitched, more alarmed one, as his hands slide up to her arms, pushing her away. 

“Eleanor,” Chidi says in panic, looking at the glass window, and Eleanor, still dazed, looks over and sure enough, Bart and Nina, their guests, are watching them, the pervs--except, for a couple of pervs who were definitely leading up to offering to have a nice neighborly orgy, they look really surprised to catch Eleanor and Chidi making out.

“Oh God,” Chidi groans, this time in dismay. Eleanor reluctantly pulls her hand away from Chidi’s skin and waves at them, offering up a weak smile. 

And still, even as she’s trying to figure out a way to spin this, Eleanor remembers what it feels like to have her fingertips dragging along Chidi’s soft skin, and the quiet little noise he’d made when she’d pulled away.

*

You’d think that after everything, actually getting Chidi into her bed would be the easiest and most fun part of Eleanor’s day. 

But instead the whole thing is strange, awkward--Chidi has moved in, it’s true, but he’s always stayed in the guest bedroom, and they’ve been just roommates, everything totally platonic. But now--now Eleanor has first-hand evidence, literally, of what Chidi feels like under those stupid professor shirts, and she is still feeling the shock of realizing she is desperately into it. 

What is _happening_ to her in this place?

But then she comes out of the bathroom to find Chidi already wrapped up in the blankets, lying so stiffly you'd think he was a corpse laid out in a coffin, and Eleanor sits back on her heels a little, not even sure of where to start with--all this. 

"Mind if I get in there?" Eleanor asks, going for wry. 

Chidi jumps a little, even though he just saw her come in, and given that she's in her pajamas, he knows that she's going to be in there, sleeping in that bed next to him all night. 

Well, hopefully not just sleeping. Although her odds don't look too great at the moment. 

"Of course, of course," Chidi says quickly, scooting over to give her more room, which is great because more room is the exact opposite of what she wants, even if Eleanor isn't even sure of what she wants yet. 

She wants...she wants that moment back again, where she was touching Chidi, kissing him, and she didn't have anything to worry about in the whole universe except making sure they didn't stop. 

So Eleanor slides into bed, and despite her heart pounding oddly in her chest, she doesn't keep to her side of the bed, just keeps moving in until she's basically in the center of the bed and Chidi either can roll on over right out of the bed, or let their bodies touch. 

He's got the covers drawn up practically to his chin. Eleanor _cannot_ believe she is still into him.

"So..." Eleanor says, going for a seductive purr. From the way Chidi's eyes grow even wider, she's not sure if it was successful. Fork it. "You wanna pick up where we left off?"

Chidi's eyebrows twitch even higher on his forehead. He's got his glasses off, obviously, he's in bed for the night, but it's still funny because Eleanor's never seen him without them before. Without the glasses his face looks weirdly naked, almost vulnerable. 

Also, his eyelashes are longer than Eleanor realized. Ugh. 

"I'm, uh...I'm not sure that's a good idea," Chidi says, those long eyelashes dipping downwards as he speaks, and Eleanor is so distracted by the way they curl at the ends that it takes her a minute to realize she's being rejected. 

What? "What?" Eleanor asks, disbelieving, and now Chidi's staring at her like he can't believe her, which is absurd. 

"Didn't you pay any attention to Nina?" he asks. "She just gave us a two-hour lecture on not letting the physical nature of our relationship distract us from the important issues! Like, I don't know, continuing to work on our lessons so that you don't have to leave the Good Place?"

Oh. Eleanor sits back. "No reason we can't do both. Lessons _and_ boning. It sounds like the perfect schedule to me." It really does, too. Clearly this place is warping her.

Wait. She narrows her eyes at Chidi. “Was Nina right about you not having an intense relationship before?” Eleanor gasps as a thought occurs to her. “Are you a _virgin_ , Chidi?”

“What? No,” Chidi says, and Eleanor settles, although not without giving him a suspicious look. “No, I just--” He stops and looks at her, and without quite realizing why, Eleanor’s stomach tightens up from nerves, not sure what he’s going to say next. 

“I liked kissing you,” Chidi admits, with the sort of honesty Eleanor can’t understand and admires all at the same time. It’s a frequent occurrence, with Chidi. “Obviously I liked kissing you. But what's at stake right now is too important for us to get distracted by...by the purely physical. Don't you think?"

And what Eleanor should be thinking about is what’s at stake, namely whether she gets tortured for eternity or stays in a place where she can eat all the shrimp and frozen yogurt she wants. But somehow, the part that’s sticking in her head is what Chidi confessed to earlier when Nina was grilling them, how he’d looked at Eleanor before admitting that paradise, meaning _her_ , wasn’t what he’d been expecting.

"Yeah," Eleanor says, trying to sound mature and accepting. "That makes sense, yeah, no, whatever."

"Eleanor," Chidi says, his voice soft, and Eleanor can't look at him or his stupid brown eyes or his stupid soft perfect mouth any longer.

"I think I should get some rest," Eleanor says quickly, and scoots away from Chidi to the safety of her own side of the bed, and turns on her side--away from Chidi--and lies there, waiting for sleep or for Chidi to come over, shake her shoulder and apologize, say, "No, you're right," and lean in and kiss her...

But he doesn't, and Eleanor reaches out to turn the light off, and she doesn't speak. In the darkness, Eleanor listens to Chidi's soft breathing--God, of course he doesn't snore--and plans ways to keep Chidi with her, to make this all right somehow. 

*

It’s actually pretty okay, after Eleanor makes her big gesture with the boat and the “Fork Off Eleanor” card. It still leaves her with a warm feeling afterwards, remembering the beaming smile on Chidi’s face, the way he’d hugged her without hesitating...and how long it had taken him to pull back. 

It’s not that she’s getting gooey over a hug. Definitely not. She’s just...pleased that they’re back on track, that’s all. 

Oh, who is she kidding, she wants to bang Chidi _real_ bad. Like, literally right now while he’s lecturing her about Kant. It’s gotten so bad that she can’t even concentrate during class, and class is her favorite--oh God, she is so, so warped right now. Warped and staring at Chidi’s ass as he writes on the chalkboard, because while those button-down shirts of Chidi are real geeky with how he tucks them into his pants, they do offer an unimpeded view of his ass, which (like nearly everything about Chidi) is great. 

Just then Chidi bends over to write something on the whiteboard, and his khaki pants stretch _just_ right, and Eleanor kind of glazes over a little bit, and it’s not until Chidi’s calling out her name that she comes back to herself. 

Chidi’s staring at her, wide-eyed, and he asks, “Were you...were you checking me out just now?”

“No!” Eleanor denies reflexively, before she realizes that a) she was actually being really obvious and b) since she does want to make out with Chidi, denial is actually not going to get her anywhere. “Well, yeah, actually.” 

Chidi looks even more incredulous at this, and gives an actual gasp as he says, “Eleanor, I am not a piece of meat!”

“Nobody said you were!” Eleanor protests. “You’ve just got this whole hot nerdy professor thing going on and I notice from time to time, so sue me!”

“A hot nerdy professor thing?” Chidi repeats, incredulous. 

“Yeah, man, with the glasses and the rolled-up sleeves and the chalk marks on your pants from all the writing on the chalkboard, _excuse_ me for appreciating the aesthetic--”

Eleanor is on a roll here, so it admittedly takes her a couple of minutes to notice the bashful smile tugging at Chidi’s mouth. “Holy shirt,” Eleanor says, cutting off her appreciative rant about Chidi’s turtleneck collection, “Chidi, are you into this?”

“What, no!” Chidi protests, putting on that big smile he gets when he lies, even as he’s fiddling nervously with his glasses. Luckily, Chidi is too fundamentally honest to keep up a lie for longer than three seconds, so Eleanor doesn’t even have time to fold her arms before he’s already conceding, “Well, perhaps it’s a little flattering…”

“You are!” Eleanor says, getting up from her seat on the couch. “You are totally into me talking about how hot you are. Chidi, that is incredibly self-centered of you, I am impressed.”

“It’s not my fault!” Chidi insists. “You’re the one who keeps raving about how my glasses make me look like a sexy owl!”

“Yeah, I am,” Eleanor says, grinning. “Want me to keep going?”

There’s a brief pause while Chidi blinks at her, and then he says slowly, “Maybe?” He pauses again. “But I don’t know about the sexy owl part.”

“Don’t worry,” Eleanor says, approaching him slowly. “I have plenty of material to work with.” Her gaze fixes on the one button that Chidi left loose on his shirt, right at the hollow of his throat. “Starting with that shirt.”

Chidi is watching her with that wide-eyed look of his, the one Eleanor is learning to really like. She can already feel the excitement starting to build, right under her skin, and she wants to bring that out in him too, wants to pull him back to that moment where she had him up against the wall, when she was kissing him and he was kissing her _back_ \--

Chidi clears his throat as she reaches him, and thanks again to that stray button, Eleanor now has a front row seat to the way his throat works as he swallows. “What, uh, what about my shirt?” he asks, and it’s probably an accident, the way his voice drops so that it’s so low and quiet. 

“Well,” Eleanor says slowly, “--it is the definition of geek chic, but I do like that it shows off your shoulders.” And to prove it, she lifts her hands and lets them trail along Chidi’s shoulders, feeling the heat of his body through the thin fabric. 

Chidi is as still as a stone while she does this, his breathing getting a little quicker, and Eleanor knows when to go in for the kill: she leans in even closer, close enough that there are only a few inches between them now. 

“I like seeing your sleeves rolled up like this too,” she murmurs, and trails her hands down Chidi’s arms until her hands can loosely circle Chidi’s bare wrists. 

Chidi actually seems to have stopped breathing for a moment, and, on instinct, Eleanor tightens her grip just a little bit. Chidi actually _gasps_ , and Eleanor wants him so much she can’t stand it. 

And just like last time, kissing Chidi is the easiest thing in the universe. Eleanor leans into it, her hands tightening around Chidi’s wrists almost by reflex. When Chidi groans into her mouth, Eleanor feels a hot rush of triumph, and she presses herself closer, backing Chidi up against the chalkboard. Chidi’s breathing shakily against her mouth, but then the chalkboard is tilting back, and Chidi stumbles and breaks the kiss, letting out a startled, “Fork!”

Ugh, where’s a convenient wall where you need one? “Don’t worry, it’s just the chalkboard,” Eleanor tries, except Chidi’s blinking at her, dazed, his mouth shining as he looks from her to the chalkboard. Then he mumbles, “Oh, fork, we were supposed to go over Hume today.”

“Hume can wait--”

Except now Chidi’s coming back to himself, buttoning himself back up--figuratively, not literally, although with Eleanor’s luck he will button that shirt collar and roll down his sleeves, dammit, _dammit_. “No, no, we can’t--I can’t.”

Well. That’s a pretty clear answer. Eleanor lets go and steps away from him, trying to swallow back her disappointment--and something that feels worse than disappointment--except Chidi looks stricken, and he blurts out, “I mean, we can’t _now_.”

Eleanor pauses, narrowing her eyes. “Now as in…”

Chidi, flustered, waves a hand at the chalkboard, where half of his careful printing is smudged. “I mean, we have _class_ , I can’t be seducing a student during a lecture.”

Eleanor can feel a dopey, giddy smile stealing across her face, but she has to point out, “Uh, I’m the one seducing _you_ , buddy.”

Chidi, even more flustered, tugs at the front of his shirt and says primly, “Yes, and you will have to wait until class is finished!”

Eleanor is grinning like an idiot, she knows it, but she holds her hands up, smugly walking backwards to the couch. “Okay, I can behave. For now.”

“Okay,” Chidi says, still tugging at his shirt--but not rolling down his sleeves or buttoning up his collar. “Okay, good.”

It’s not the best lecture Chidi’s given, he’s still too thrown and too flustered, but it’s absolutely the best lecture Eleanor’s ever been in, and that includes the one where a student showed up high on shrooms and ended up on the professor’s desk crowing like a rooster before the campus police showed up. 

*

"So are you a virgin?" Eleanor asks that evening. 

She'd been good all day long, right through the rest of Chidi's lecture; she'd even held off and done her homework while Chidi edited her latest paper and prepared materials for tomorrow's class--the whole thing was weirdly cozy _and_ vaguely dirty in that "hot for teacher" way that Eleanor freely admitted she was into. 

"What?" Chidi asks, looking baffled at the question. "I already told you I wasn't."

Eleanor narrows her eyes, and Chidi starts to look flustered again. "I've had relationships, Eleanor, I just--" He stops and bites his lip. "My...previous partners and I weren't that, uh, adventurous. Or experimental."

Eleanor thinks that over and translates that into, "So nobody’s ever pinned you to the nearest flat surface before.”

"Definitely not," Chidi agrees, and his skin is too dark for Eleanor to see if he's blushing, really, but he _sounds_ like he's blushing. 

“Hmm,” Eleanor says. “But you’re into it.”

Chidi closes his eyes and nods quickly, and Eleanor shivers. She carefully gets up from her seat and walks to Chidi’s chair, and braces her arms on either side of him as she leans in. “So let’s go to bed,” she offers, “and we can be...adventurous again.”

Chidi stares up at her, his eyes wide behind his glasses, and then he nods faintly.

*

The entire time they’re walking to Eleanor’s bedroom, Chidi’s as stiff as a plank and looking around the room with huge eyes, and for once it’s probably not because of the clown walls. 

Eleanor’s watching him warily, because he looks like he’s two seconds away from hyperventilating, and right as she’s about to offer to take this slower, Chidi exhales and turns to kiss her, his hands cupping her face as his mouth moves against hers. Eleanor groans and kisses him back, clutching at his shirt and dragging him down with her onto the bed, where she climbs on top of him and, after a second of hesitation, pins his arms down against the sheets. 

Her skin buzzing from a mixture of excitement and nerves--even if she’ll never admit to the latter--Eleanor pulls back to ask, “Good?”

Chidi looks dazed, glasses askew on his face, but he immediately nods, and Eleanor sighs happily in relief before getting back to business. 

It’s so good, is the thing, having Chidi beneath her like this, feeling him squirm against her and knowing he won’t get away, knowing he’s just as into this as she is. It’s all so good that Eleanor can’t be blamed for not paying attention to anything else--which is how she misses the giant whirlpool developing in the floor, seawater churning where the hardwood floor used to be, until the bed starts to _sink into it_ , and Chidi starts yelling, and she starts shrieking, as they frantically try to keep from drowning or being sucked down some metaphysical sink drain--right until Janet and Michael fish them out. 

*

“A _whirlpool_?” Eleanor repeats for the fifth time that night. Thanks to Janet, she is now dry and not in danger of being flushed down some magical drain like a dead goldfish, but she’s still indignant and frustrated on many levels. “What the heck, Michael, I thought things were finally settling down here!”

Chidi gives her a warning look, and as Michael’s face falls, Eleanor feels a twinge of guilt. Well, less of a twinge, more like a steak knife stabbing her in the arm. 

“I’m so sorry, you two,” Michael says earnestly, looking like a kicked puppy. “I’d hoped we were past the glitches, but clearly if you’re being interrupted in your intimate moments--” Eleanor lets out a quiet “gah” of horror at the euphemism, “--by unexplained aquatic phenomena, well, that just isn’t anyone’s idea of paradise, now is it?”

“No kidding,” Chidi mumbles, but so softly Eleanor can barely hear it. 

“Clearly we have to investigate further,” Michael says, scrubbing a hand through his hair. “Surely there must be a _reason_ for all this chaos and upheaval--”

Eleanor can feel herself getting tenser at this, but Chidi’s arm brushes against hers, deliberately leaning against her as he says, “And we are happy to help, Michael, but in the meantime, we should probably be getting some rest, and since half of Eleanor’s house is currently underwater--”

“Oh certainly, I don’t mean to burden you,” Michael says, with a brave-little-toaster look that has Eleanor privately groaning--seriously, she never used to feel guilty before landing in this place. “It’ll take some time before the house is livable again, but in the meantime, Tahani has kindly agreed to put you both up as her guests.”

“Wait,” Eleanor says, stopping dead in her tracks. “Are you saying that Tahani is going to be my roommate?”

*

“Welcome to our home,” Tahani trills as she poses gracefully on the giant-ass staircase. “Obviously, the circumstances are less than ideal--”

“Yeah, giant murderous whirlpools of seawater aren’t a picnic,” Eleanor agrees, sardonic.

“I don’t think the whirlpool was deliberately trying to kill us,” Chidi says, and Eleanor stares at him in disbelief. 

“Are you defending the whirlpool of death?” she asks indignantly.

Chidi protests, “I’m just saying that we’re already dead, so it couldn’t have been trying to murder us.”

“Yeah, well, I say--” Eleanor catches sight of Tahani’s raised eyebrows, and hastily changes track. “I say it’s _so_ kind of you to let us stay, Tahani, _thank_ you.”

From Chidi’s quirked eyebrow, Eleanor might be laying it on a little thick, but Tahani beams. “Oh, Eleanor, I’m just so pleased to have you both as our guests while your own home is being repaired,” she coos. “Aren’t we pleased, my love?” she asks Jianyu, who just looks at both of them before offering a deep and solemn nod, as silent as ever. 

“Glad to see you too, buddy,” Eleanor murmurs. 

“Now come with me,” Tahani says, “I’ve put you two in the Degas room. I do hope you like it!”

Eleanor does _not_ like it. Not even a little bit. She’s still staring at the room with total dismay when Chidi comes out of the bathroom, having changed into his pajamas. “Wow,” Eleanor says as Chidi wearily flops on top of the bed, “I _hate_ this Dejas guy.”

“Degas,” Chidi corrects automatically, then lifts his head off the pillow. “Wait, really?”

“Yeah, this is hella creepy,” Eleanor says, gesturing with her hand at all the creepy paintings of ballerinas on stage, lit like they’re all in the ninth circle of hell. “Look at them, they look all sickly and weird.” She pauses to peer a little more closely at one of the paintings and shudders, before a thought occurs to her. “What if they’re _vampire_ ballerinas?”

Chidi’s very clearly fighting back a smile. “I don’t think they’re meant to be vampires,” he says, and chuckles as Eleanor glares at him. “I’m sorry, I’m not laughing at you--I just think it’s funny that you’re totally unfazed by all the clown paintings back home, but Degas is what freaks you out. It’s cute.”

Eleanor feels a warm glow at that, both at Chidi calling her cute and at his referring so casually to “home”. She’s still not sure how they landed here, Chidi smiling at her as he’s sitting in the bed they’re about to share for the night, but evil whirlpool or not--

Eleanor just wants to get this _right_ , that’s all. 

“So you think I’m cute, huh?” Eleanor asks, smirking at him. 

Chidi shrugs elaborately, a tiny smile on his face as he concedes, “Sometimes. When you aren’t calling me a sexy owl.” He breaks out into a grin as he says this, so pleased with himself for making the joke that Eleanor has to smile back. 

"Hey, man, I just call it like I see it," Eleanor says, shrugging elaborately. 

Chidi gives her a skeptical look. "And you see me as a sexy owl."

Eleanor gives him her widest grin. "It's a compliment."

Chidi gives another of those quiet chuckles at that, and Eleanor wants--well, she wants to do a lot of things, but given the decor, the fact that they're in Tahani's fricking ginormous palace, and the fact that they nearly got eaten by a whirlpool today, the whole sexy vibe they were working earlier is kind of--not dead, exactly, just dormant. Waiting.

But that's okay. Eleanor can be good for now. She can wait. 

So Eleanor carefully walks over and slips under the covers, which feel like a cloud--God, is this what people mean when they talk about thread count? Good grief--and settles back, aware of exactly how many inches are between her and Chidi, how easy it could be to reach over and touch him right now. 

From the way Chidi's watching her right now, he knows what she's thinking--and he doesn't look like he minds. 

But then, over his shoulder, Eleanor catches sight of yet another painting and mentally shudders. Nope, not doing it in front of the freaky vampire ballerinas, nope nope nope. 

Instead, Eleanor sits up in bed and reaches over to the small bedside table, rummaging in the tiny drawer until she finds a small notepad and a gold-plated pen. "God, are there actual rubies on this pen?"

“Probably,” Chidi says, frowning slightly, and he adds slowly, “Eleanor, if you’re feeling the need to do homework right now--”

“It’s not homework,” Eleanor says, smiling sunnily at him. She uncaps the pen and frowns at the tip--God, of course it’s a fountain pen. Whatever, as long as the ink doesn’t run out. “I’m just making a list of all the nasty, dirty sex stuff I want to do to you in bed.”

It is honestly incredible, the way she can see the exact second that Chidi’s brain goes offline. “I,” Chidi stutters. “I--sorry, when you say--”

“Nasty. Dirty. Sex stuff,” Eleanor repeats, making sure to enunciate. “Don’t worry, babe, bondage is at the top of the list.”

“Well,” Chidi says, only sounding a little bit strangled--ooh, would he be into that? Eleanor’s never strangled a guy during sex before, but she’s willing to go there if need be. “That is, uh. That is...good to know.”

Eleanor winks at him, feeling very pleased with herself. 

*

"You know, out of all the ideas I've had, I think that this is definitely one of the best," Eleanor says the next day, considering her own handiwork. 

"Is that a fact?" Chidi asks, his voice sounding a little hoarse. He's blinking up at her with wide eyes, but his hands are relaxed above the bands of rope wrapped around his wrists and the headboard, and he hasn't uttered the safeword that both he and Eleanor agreed upon. 

He's also not wearing anything except for his boxers, which are sky blue and covered with little tiny writing quills--when Eleanor had stared at them, Chidi had ducked his head and muttered something about finding the whimsy appealing. 

"Hey dude, I'm not judging," Eleanor had said to him, both quick and honest. "Look, you've got me getting hot and bothered about _turtlenecks_ , I'm not picky."

Then she'd eyed up the rest of him and added, "Although right now, I'm loving my taste in men."

And the shy, delighted smile Chidi had given her at that was honestly enough to make Eleanor feel like she'd just won the damn lottery.

So now here they are, Eleanor wearing a slinky, lacy nightgown she'd managed to order from Janet without too much blushing, Chidi tied to her bed wearing nothing but boxers and a hopeful smile on his face, and Eleanor's brain is spinning with all the possibilities of what she could do right now. 

After a moment, Eleanor lifts her hand and lets a fingertip trail gently down the center of Chidi's chest, feeling him tense beneath her touch, his breathing kicking up a notch as her fingers travel even lower. 

"This," Eleanor says, with total sincerity, "is going to be so much forking fun."

Chidi is still looking wide-eyed, but he manages to say in a tone of relative calm, "Well, I would think that's the point."

Eleanor laughs, delighted, and leans in to kiss him, meaning for the kiss to be soft and gentle, but something in the way Chidi tilts his head up to meet her kiss is just--Eleanor finds herself pressing in harder, holding Chidi's face in her hands as she bites at his soft lower lip until he's gasping, groaning against her mouth. Eleanor scrambles on top of him, straddling his waist and grinding her hips down as warmth blooms inside of her, as a spark travels down her spine. 

This, this right here is exactly what she's been wanting, Chidi soft and yielding beneath her, all that warm muscle beneath her hands, Chidi right here, offering himself up like a gift, like the best thing she's ever gotten and nothing she has ever deserved, and Eleanor won't feel bad or guilty about this, not for a second, because Chidi is, he's--

"God, you're wonderful," Eleanor mumbles into his mouth, and when she pulls back, Chidi is blinking up at her, his eyes dark and beautiful as he says, sincerely, "So are you."

Eleanor stares down at him, and then lets out an unconvincing laugh. “I mean, obviously I’m great, have you seen me? I’m a stone-cold fox, buddy.”

“Eleanor--”

“And I’m becoming more ethical by the minute, like this morning at breakfast, I was super nice to Tahani and I didn’t say _anything_ about her looking like a hot flamingo in that dress--”

“Eleanor,” Chidi says, not loud, but still clear enough that it cuts through her babbling. “I know. I know you, remember?”

And he does, that’s the terrifying part. Not even that he’s seen her at her worst, but that he’s seen her at her messiest, her most vulnerable, and he hasn’t gone away, he’s still right here with her in this--

“I like you a lot,” Eleanor blurts out, and how ridiculous is it that she’s got him tied to her bed, is straddling him in a nightgown that reveals _way_ more than it conceals, and an admission of feelings is what has her blushing right now. “I mean. Obviously.”

But Chidi is smiling up at her like he doesn’t find this ridiculous at all. “I like you a lot too,” he says. “Obviously,” he adds, waggling his fingers. 

Eleanor snorts, smiling reluctantly, and just as she’s about to lean in and kiss him again--that’s when she hears a distant rumble from outside. 

Wait, not a rumble-- _honking_. 

Chidi hears it too; he lifts his head up and asks, slowly, “What is that?”

Eleanor doesn’t move, and then, alarm rising, she scrambles off Chidi and the bed, running to the nearest porthole of a window and peering outside, and then immediately starts cursing. Or the closest thing you can get to cursing in this place. “Oh, _fork_. Fork, fork, fork!”

“Eleanor?” Chidi calls out with alarm from the bed, rattling the headboard--but not in a fun way. Ohh, no fun is going to be had today. 

Eleanor turns back to face Chidi and says, in a tone of overwhelming doom, “It’s a _motherforking flamingo stampede._ ”

*

“To be clear,” Michael says that afternoon at a hastily-called town meeting in the square, “the flamingos were not stampeding. What we witnessed was a spontaneous expression of the Andean flamingo mating dance.”

“Oh my God,” Eleanor mumbles in the center of the crowd, rubbing at her temple. Chidi’s even worse, sitting next to her with his arms crossed over his stomach, as tense and rigid as she’s ever seen him.

“At this point, I would like to offer a special apology to Glenn,” Michael continues, “whose flamingo phobia was so unfortunately exacerbated by today’s events--”

“Flamingo phobia?” Eleanor echoes, incredulous, but she still sinks a little lower in her seat as everyone around them makes sympathetic noises, Glenn saying in a wobbly voice, “Thank you, everyone--it’s just the way that their heads bob.”

“We’re all with you, Glenn,” Michael says solemnly, a hand on his chest. And okay, Eleanor does feel a little guilty, sure, but she also remembers Glenn running through the streets, shrieking his head off as the flamingos all followed, and it’s enough to have her choking back laughter. 

Hey, she can’t be a good person all the time just yet. 

“Eleanor,” Chidi hisses out of the corner of his mouth, and Eleanor tries to rid herself of her giggles by coughing loudly into her fist. 

“Allergies,” she mouths when Gunther gives her a curious look, and when Chidi gives her another disapproving glare, she leans in and grabs his knee as she says, “Relax, I’m behaving, okay? No flamingos here.”

“Not anymore, there aren’t,” Chidi mutters in response. 

But Eleanor’s found a better distraction to occupy herself with, namely, seeing how high she can get that hand up Chidi’s thigh. 

Look. She was _this close_ to getting laid, and a town meeting about maverick flamingos or whatever is not doing a lot to help her deal with all that sexual frustration. 

Chidi, though, clutches at her hand and hisses, “Eleanor, you can’t feel me up in public!”

“Can I do it in private?” Eleanor asks in his ear, and she can tell when he shivers. 

“ _Later_ ,” Chidi grits out. But his hand is still warm and strong as it rests on top of hers, and Eleanor sits back, resigning herself to being patient. Again. 

It’s got to be her imagination, but when she looks over at Michael, for just a second his face almost looks...exasperated. 

But hey, Eleanor figures that wrangling a surprise flock of flamingos has to take a lot out of a guy. Maybe she’ll suggest some ways for him to relax, find a way to blow off some steam. Hey, that can be her good deed for the week. 

Of course, it’ll have to wait until after she finally gets Chidi alone in a room with a bed and a door that locks, with no whirlpools or wild animals to be found. Eleanor might be trying to be a better person, but she’s still got her priorities. 

*

Unfortunately, the stupid forking flamingos have thrown a bigger wrench in Eleanor’s plans than she’d realized. 

“You’re really not seeing the pattern here?” Chidi asks her once they’re back at home, hands on his hips. 

Eleanor groans. “Yes, obviously I shouldn’t have called Tahani a flamingo. Although in my defense, I didn’t _actually_ say--”

“Eleanor!” Chidi looks even more upset as he blurts out, “The universe doesn’t want us to have sex, okay?”

Eleanor chokes. “I’m sorry, _what_?”

Chidi starts to pace. “The first phenomenon was the whirlpool, where you hadn’t done anything morally wrong or questionable. And the same with the flamingos, you hadn’t actually insulted Tahani. But both times we were still on the verge of...well, you know.”

“And two freak coincidences are enough for you to declare a vow of celibacy?” Eleanor asks him in disbelief. “Chidi, come on, there’s been something weird going on with this place since the beginning--”

“Not something, us!” Chidi insists. “Eleanor, I have to think this is a sign--”

“A sign that what, you should stop helping me? Stop kissing me, stop wanting me?” Eleanor demands, her chest tightening. 

Chidi sighs, and his shoulders slumped. “A sign that no matter my--my personal feelings, our relationship should stay platonic, that I have a responsibility and a duty to keep you focused on your own personal growth, not on...on other matters.”

The only thing stopping Eleanor from throwing an epic fit is that Chidi looks utterly miserable as he’s saying this, that he’s gazing at her like she’s exactly what he wants, and yet because of a few stupid coincidences and Chidi’s overdeveloped sense of responsibility, he thinks he can’t have her. 

Fork _that._

“Janet?” Eleanor calls out, and hears a chirpy, “Hi there,” from behind her. 

Eleanor turns around to face Janet and asks, defiantly, “Janet, is sex banned in the Good Place?”

Ignoring Chidi’s “Oh, dear God,” in the background, Eleanor folds her arms and waits, and she’s not disappointed. 

“Fun fact, all forms of sexual activity that are consensual between all involved parties are allowed in the Good Place,” Janet declares, beaming benevolently at them. 

“Wait, really?” Chidi asks. 

Eleanor whirls around and says, “Hah, I told you!” Another thought occurs to her, and she asks, “Janet? If someone needed to get, say, sex toys--”

“Oh my God,” Chidi says.

“--or any other accessories, we could just ask you for them, couldn’t we?”

“Certainly,” Janet chirps, looking both like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth and like she’d absolutely be down to give Eleanor a detailed lecture on what type of vibrators are best suited to hit the g-spot. 

“Excellent,” Eleanor says, and pulls out a piece of notebook paper from her pocket. “Because I have a list.”

“Oh my _God_ ,” Chidi groans, sitting in the nearest chair with his hand over his face. 

“Oh, and Chidi’ll have a latte with almond milk to calm him down,” Eleanor adds, and Chidi says faintly, “Thank you.”

“Here for you, babe,” Eleanor replies. 

Chidi does seem to recover a little while drinking the latte, at least enough that he not only _doesn’t_ faint when Janet happily instructs Eleanor on the history of nipple clamps, but he manages to say firmly, “I’m vetoing the clamps, for the record.”

“Nipple clamps are gone,” Eleanor says promptly, tossing them aside. 

“Thank God,” Chidi says, and sips at his latte before adding quietly into his coffee mug, “The leather cuffs can stay, though.”

The grin that Eleanor’s got on her face has to look totally demented, but it’s not like that’ll scare Chidi off at this point--he knows what she’s like. 

*

Of course, it’s not as simple as simply handing Janet a shopping list of all the sex toys she wants, waiting for Janet to leave, and going at it with Chidi like kinky rabbits. God, she wishes.

Chidi's watching her quietly from his chair, and for once, she can't read the look on his face. 

"So," Eleanor says, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. "Wanna talk about this?"

Chidi is quiet for a moment, and then he says, "You know I'm not...trying to be difficult here, right? It's just that this, our relationship, it's...important to me. I want to get this right."

Eleanor exhales shakily, relieved. "Me too. I just don't..." Honesty still doesn't come naturally to her; it takes a minute for Eleanor to not only work out what she wants to say, but how she wants to say it. "Look, I don't want to see weird animals rampaging through this place either, and I definitely don't want to see things get ruined. But what's the point of me killing myself trying to be better, and you killing yourself trying to show me how to be better, if we don't have something for ourselves? Something that just...makes us happy."

Eleanor realizes she's twisting her hands together, and quickly moves to hide them behind her back as she waits. 

Chidi's looking at her oddly, a sudden light in his eyes. "Okay," he says quietly, almost to himself. 

Eleanor blinks, thrown. "Wait, okay as in--"

But Chidi for once, is already way ahead of her, as he's pushing himself out of the chair and stepping forward to kiss her on the mouth, immediate and sure, his hands curving around her face as he holds her close. 

*

“We could,” Eleanor gasps out in between kisses as she and Chidi stumble to the bed, “--we could get the cuffs, or the--” Chidi’s mouth trails along her jawline, and Eleanor stutters, a shiver going down her back. 

“Later,” Chidi says against her skin, his voice a hoarse rumble that she absolutely wants to hear more of, and Eleanor throws an arm around his neck and kisses him as they fall together to the bed. 

At this point, there’s so much that isn’t a surprise: Eleanor knows what Chidi looks like with his shirt off--hot as hell, for the record--just like she knows how it feels to straddle his waist and grind down against him, how good it feels when Chidi’s hands are on her bare skin. 

It’s so good, and it’s so easy to just stay like this, Eleanor pinning Chidi’s wrists down, bracing her weight on him as she grinds down against his cock. It could almost be embarrassing, how turned on she’s getting just from this, how wet she is in her panties, but Chidi’s gasps are getting louder as she goes on, as he futilely lifts up his hips and squirms and stares up at her with those beautiful dark eyes. 

“Good?” Eleanor asks him, testing, and Chidi grits out in reply, “You know it is, Eleanor, please--”

“It’s okay,” Eleanor promises, dropping kisses all over his face, not because it’s a thing she’s planned, but just because she wants to, she wants to do this more than anything else in this mixed-up universe. “It’s okay, I’ve got you.”

Somehow, somehow they manage to scramble out of their underwear, and then Eleanor is slowly, slowly sliding down onto Chidi’s cock, gasping as he stretches her open. “Oh my God,” she groans, rubbing at her clit as she rocks down. 

As she looks at Chidi, who appears to be barely breathing, Eleanor slowly starts to smile, a possessive thrill running through her, and lets her free hand trail along his cheek, her fingers brushing against his mouth. “Hey. You still with me?”

Chidi’s hands flex on her hips, where he’d moved them, and he brushes a soft, faint kiss against her fingers. “Yeah,” he breathes out. “Yeah, I’m with you.”

*

Much later that afternoon, Chidi says thoughtfully, his fingers trailing through Eleanor’s hair, “So that was...really good.”

Eleanor stretches out in the bed, smug and satisfied. “Mm, I’m glad we got the cuffs out for round two.”

“So am I,” Chidi admits, and Eleanor says as she lifts up her head to look at him, “Oh, trust me, I could tell.”

Chidi covers his face with one hand, but Eleanor can still see the embarrassed yet proud smile that’s peeking out between his fingers. “Don’t remind me.”

“What?” Eleanor asks. “Dude, that was awesome. I had multiple orgasms! I didn’t even know you could do that thing you did with your tongue--although given how many languages you speak, I probably should have.”

She’s about to keep going--God knows she’s got plenty of material to work with--but then Eleanor falls silent as she notices the way Chidi’s watching her, serious and thoughtful, like she deserves to be studied as thoroughly as David Hume or Immanuel Kant. 

He’s still stroking Eleanor’s hair, and she shivers a little bit as his fingers gently graze the delicate skin at the nape of her neck. Eleanor resists, barely, the urge to lean into it and instead prods him with a soft, “What is it?”

“Nothing,” Chidi says. “I’m just--I’m happy, that’s all.” 

Eleanor goes warm all over at that, but there’s some small, insecure part of her that has her testing him with, “Even though we’ve been fleeing whirlpools and rampaging flamingos--”

“Even with the whirlpools and flamingos,” Chidi promises her, his eyes steady and his voice calm and sure, and Eleanor stares at him for one long moment before pouncing, climbing on top of him as she kisses him and kisses him, that joyfully possessive thrill running through every inch of her body. 

*

So it turns out that Chidi is pretty romantic as a boyfriend. Eleanor would give him all sorts of crap over it, except that it turns out she’s embarrassingly into it, like when he surprises her by having them take the afternoon off to go walking in a gorgeous meadow, only to discover that Janet’s set up a late lunch for them by a sprawling giant tree, a tiny table set up with wine that Eleanor could never have afforded in real life, and on the plates--

“Shrimp,” Eleanor breathes out joyfully. “Oh buddy, you are _so_ getting laid when we’re getting home tonight.” She pauses and admits, “Okay, we’d still have sex even without the shrimp, but you are racking up all the points right now.”

Chidi chuckles and pulls out her chair for her. “I thought it’d be nice to have an afternoon for us,” he explains bashfully as he gestures around the idyllic meadow, and ducks his face when Eleanor beams at him. 

“So many points,” Eleanor promises him in a low, throaty voice, and then immediately starts to stuff her face with the most delicious shrimp imaginable. 

It takes her a minute to notice the faint buzzing noises--the meadow is so beautiful, a gentle breeze stirring the tall grass around their feet, the sunshine warm on her skin, a bee buzzing around Chidi’s head. 

Chidi, occupied with his own meal, idly waves it away, then frowns as he lifts his head. “You don’t think…”

“No, no way,” Eleanor says, with more confidence than she actually feels. “Come on, there’s no logic to it.”

“Hmm,” Chidi says, and turns back to his meal, but not two minutes later, there are several bees buzzing around their table. Eleanor impatiently brushes one off her water glass. 

“Okay, this is maybe a little bit unusual,” Eleanor concedes, flapping her hands around her in a futile attempt to keep the bees from buzzing right in her ear. 

“Uh, Eleanor--” Chidi says, looking up at the sky--the sky that has suddenly grown a lot darker in the last few seconds, as a loud and persistent buzzing fills the air. 

“Oh boy,” Eleanor says, as she lifts her head up and sees the huge swarm of bees currently blotting out the sun. “Ohhh, _shorts_.”

And that’s when the bees attack. 

In between the yelling and diving for cover and attempting to hide behind trees, none of which works, by the way, the tiny corner of Eleanor’s mind that is not screaming about bees and cursing everything in existence is thinking very hard. 

She’s thinking about how ever since she and Chidi first kissed, they’ve been cockblocked by one unexplained phenomenon after the other--first it was Nina and Bart, then the whirlpools, then it was Tahani’s guest room filled with creepy ballerina paintings, then it was a forking flamingo stampede, and now bees, even though Janet _promised_ that sex was allowed in the Good Place. 

And that’s when it hits Eleanor, like the sight of a swarm of bees descending from the sky. 

“ _This_ is the Bad Place!” Eleanor realizes, while in the background Chidi yelps with growing alarm, “Bees, bees, bees, _bees!_ ”

And somehow, over the sound of Chidi yelping and the bees buzzing and Eleanor cursing, for just one second, somewhere deep in her head Eleanor hears a faint _click _, like someone snapping their fingers together.__

__*_ _

__“Okay,” Michael concedes into his tape recorder, after the unsuccessful conclusion of Attempt #534. “So maybe the bees were a bit of a desperation move.”_ _


End file.
